Ullapool Guitar Festival 2003

13 Oct 2003 in Highland, Music

Ullapool, 10-12 October 2003

FIVE SQUARE MILES surrounded by reality.  So said one of the performers at last weekend’s Ullapool Guitar Festival – and it certainly summed up the occasion.

Hugh Burns

Hugh Burns

We arrived on Friday afternoon after driving through the strawberry blonde October landscape complete with compulsory wind-whipped water, gossamer rain veiling white sunshine and square rainbows.  It was no surprise that visitors from as far away as Bolivia, Florida – and Hull found the whole experience memorable.  And that was before the music even began.

The first concert took place on Friday night at The Ceilidh Place. Tristan Seume, a newcomer to the festival, settled the packed house with his set that kicked off the evening and set the tone for the weekend. He was followed by Hugh Burns who, within the first thirty seconds proved that he is, quite simply, a genius, with gorgeous, warm and drifting renditions of new music and a feather light touch on the classics.

The popular Paul Buckley followed Hugh, and then Clive Carroll took to the stage. Clive’s performance was stunning.  His music has always delighted audiences but, on Friday night, he allowed them to be witness to his virtuosity being enhanced by a release of his emotional personality as shown by the taut, yet expression-filled performance of “Aerial Discoveries”.

The evening came to a close in the early hours with a remarkable jam session with Paul, Hugh and Clive blatantly showing off!

On Saturday afternoon, there were free gigs in the Ferry Boat Inn, The Ceilidh Place, The Seaforth and The Argyll Hotel.  These gigs brought more from Tristan Seume, beautiful classical music from Anne Chaurand and Galo Ceròn from Bolivia, and introduced local guitarist Graham Muir who received an extremely positive reaction at each of the gigs he played.

Saturday’s evening concert featured another newcomer to Ullapool, David Allison, who entranced the full house with his barefoot performance using real-time sampling and looping that built up layers of percussion and bass before introducing the beautifully chilled melodies of “Space”, “Azür” and the Celtic-flavoured “Maximo”.

Next, we were treated to Richard Gilewitz who was greeted with cheers when he was introduced as coming from Inverness.  The fact that it was Inverness, Florida, and not our own capital, was soon evidenced by his very funny, unassuming and surreal sense of humour that linked each piece he played with consummate skill and feeling.

Finally, at the end of another packed evening as I was beginning to feel just a little ‘guitar-ed out’, came Tony McManus.  Billed as the ‘best Celtic guitarist in the world”, he proved more than worthy of his title with reels and airs that had his fingers flying over a preposterous amount of notes.

Sunday afternoon was packed with more gigs. The afternoon session with Martin Stephenson and Paul Rose in the Ferry Boat Inn was worthy of top billing at any event.  The weekend came to a close with a final concert at The Seaforth, which was absolutely heaving with people and music long into the night, and was last seen in my rear view mirror as we headed home exhausted and truly indulged in a feast of guitar.

© Andrea Muir, 2003